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Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick Lies in Honor at U.S. Capitol; Report Indicates House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy Leaning Toward Removing Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from Education Committee; House Managers Say Trump "Singularly Responsible" For Inciting Riot; Study: AstraZeneca Vaccine Drastically Slows Spread of Coronavirus. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired February 03, 2021 - 08:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[08:00:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, U.S. Capitol police officers and members of Congress are filing past the casket there. They are honoring the slain officer inside the Capitol Rotunda where some of the hideous action happened four weeks ago.

President Biden and first lady and lawmakers who Sicknick gave his life for paid their respects last night. You can see that here. Today House managers will lay out their case against former President Trump for inciting that insurrection. They argue that Mr. Trump is, quote, singularly responsible for the deadly Capitol siege. They want him barred from ever seeking public office again. Mr. Trump's lawyers claim their client's speech was protected by the First Amendment and a Senate conviction would be unconstitutional. This morning, President Biden is weighing in.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, breaking this morning, new reporting from "Politico" that House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy is leaning -- leaning toward removing Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from the Education Committee. Now, Greene has endorsed statements calling for the execution of Democratic leaders. She has harassed survivors of school shootings. She has suggested mass shootings were staged hoaxes.

And again, this morning the reporting from "Politico" is that McCarthy is leaning toward removing her from the Education Committee. We'll see if it happens. Why just leaning? What might be pushing him this way? And what is she refusing to do that might help her keep her committee post. That in just a moment.

First, Josh Campbell in Washington where officer Brian Sicknick lies in honor this morning. Josh?

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. We're taking you live inside the Capitol Rotunda where the remains of this fallen officer are currently lying in honor. As you mentioned, there has been a steady stream of people coming to pay their respects. Lawmakers, as well as members of the Capitol police, many of them wearing black bands around their badges to symbolize this period of mourning. We saw a short time ago Senators Romney and Klobuchar, other leaders. Again, he is there lying in honor after succumbing to injuries from that January 6th Capitol insurrection.

Last night there was a very solemn ceremony as his remains arrived. They were carried up the East Capitol steps and into the rotunda. Again, lawmakers and other officers there to pay their respect. We also heard just before 10:00 p.m. that the president's motorcade had departed the White House. A short time later we saw President Biden and the first lady there paying their respects, walking up to the remains, placing their hands on their hearts. Just a tribute to the life of this officer and the service that he gave to his nation.

I want to show you one quick image here, though, you see. Biden is there before a wreath. You see him just shaking his head, seemingly projecting what so many across the country are feeling right now, and that is just this senseless tragedy. A police officer lost his life because of this domestic terrorist attack on the United States Capitol, and today he is being mourned finally. There will be a departure ceremony later on this morning. His ashes will be taken across the river into Virginia where he will be interred at Arlington National Cemetery. Alisyn, John?

BERMAN: That small headshake really did speak volumes, didn't it, Josh? There's been a question about why there haven't been charges yet in the death of Officer Sicknick. What do we know? What's the combination here?

CAMPBELL: Sources are telling CNN that authorities are struggling with this murder investigation because they have not pinpointed a moment on this mountain of evidence, these videos, images, selfies and the like, they haven't pinpointed a moment where they actually see someone inflicting an injury on this officer. What we're told is that Officer Sicknick had collapsed later that evening on January 6th and then later succumbed to injuries. However, sources are telling us that, according to medical examiner review, he did not receive any type of blunt-force trauma, so the cause of his death is still under investigation. Authorities tell us that they continue to try to identify if there was a moment, if there was a person or person that was responsible for inflicting some injury.

But it's also worth pointing out that regardless of whether they pinpoint one person, this entire siege, this entire insurrection caused the loss of life for one police officer, many more injuries as well. Just obviously, a tough time for Capitol police officers and indeed the nation based on what we saw there on January 6th, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Josh, thank you very much for all of the reporting from the Capitol for us.

Now more on the breaking political news. "Politico" reports that Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is leaning towards removing QAnon believer, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from the Education Committee. Does that go far enough?

Joining us now, we have CNN political commentator Scott Jennings, he's a former special assistant to President George W. Bush and has worked on several of Mitch McConnell's, also with us, former Republican congressman Denver Riggleman, he's also chief strategist for the Network Contagion Research Institute. Great to have both of you here.

[08:05:00]

Congressman, I want to start with you. We thought we might hear something last night after this long-awaited meeting between Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Marjorie Taylor Greene. We thought he would come out with some sort of action plan or something to hold her accountable for the QAnon conspiracy theories and the violent rhetoric that she's embraced. But no. So why is this so tough for Minority Leader McCarthy?

DENVER RIGGLEMAN, (R) FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: I think he's taken a lot of things into consideration. If we take away our moral judgment of the awfulness that happened on the siege and the disinformation campaign, it's about political calculations right now. So how about fundraising? Marjorie Taylor Greene is fundraising a lot right now from the grassroots. What about a committee? My guess is there's going to be a compromise on the committee, Alisyn. I think they're going to take away one committee but they might leave her on budget. They are talking about Trump support. What do they do with that?

So there's all these things that come into consideration on the political side. And Kevin is running for speaker in 2022. Does he actually want to diminish the amount of money that's coming into his coffers because he's going against somebody who seems to be pretty popular with the base? And I think that's what you're seeing. It can be distasteful, but I believe this is a political negotiation going on behind closed doors. And I've been a part of these conference talks before. I've been in the room, and I think that's what's happening right now unfortunately. And I thought something would happen last night, but again, it's not a surprise it didn't.

CAMEROTA: So Scott, fundraise and win at any cost?

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. Look, I hope the "Politico" report is true. I hope Kevin McCarthy looks at this. I don't know what we're talking about, I don't even know what we're negotiating. The Republican Party cannot be defined by cranks, kooks. We're not talking about debating the finer points of trade policy or tax policy or some other interparty policy squabble. We're talking about whether this party, the party that seeks to be the majority party in the House, that wants to get back to the majority in the Senate, the party that wants to win the White House in 2024, are we going to be defined by conspiracy theories that go so far beyond what we would consider to be on the normal political spectrum that most Americans will say, we can't trust these people with positions of high governing responsibility.

So this is a key moment in Kevin McCarthy's tenure. I hope the "Politico" report is true. I hope he gets this right. He has to take a stand now. I will be the first to admit, I was slow to understand just how pervasive the conspiracy theory culture has become. I didn't understand it for a long time. I get it now. Look at what happened on January 6th. You cannot let this continue to metastasize. It has to be dealt with right now.

CAMEROTA: And Scott, very quickly, if Kevin McCarthy, part of what the "Politico" report said was that maybe he would just take away one of her committee standings. So the Education Committee, because how can she make any policy decisions regarding children after she doesn't believe that Parkland and Sandy Hook happened, or maybe they were inside jobs, and she's harassed David Hogg. So they might take that away. If they just take one away instead of two, is that good enough, Scott?

JENNINGS: No, no. There's no half measure here. What they are deciding is who can carry the Republican banner. They are deciding who they want to be affiliated with. They are deciding who they want to be defined by. And they are either going to say, we're not going to be defined by these people, or we are. There's no half measure here. You either want to be in the room with the sandwich board caucus or you don't. And so my advice is, cut ties now. There's no harm in it. You have nothing to lose. You have a lot to gain in terms of credibility with the American people if you make the right decision now. Half measures, I don't think, are going to cut it.

CAMEROTA: Congressman Riggleman, we're just getting this in. This is Marjorie Taylor Greene now responding to this new reporting from "Politico." She says this morning, "No matter what the GOP leader does," Kevin McCarthy, "it would never be enough for the hate America Democrats. As much as he genuinely tries to work with Speaker Pelosi for the good of the country, she refuses to see the hypocrisy of her own conference." What, Congressman?

RIGGLEMAN: That's the issue. If he strips away her committee assignments, she becomes more powerful in certain parts of the Twittersphere or social media. And that's the issue that you have right now is that this has become so pervasive. And Scott is right. You want to make a stand right now. I've been on this show so many times saying this is insane, this is crazy, this is nutty. But on the other hand, when you're looking at a lot of these districts and you see, what, 147 people we're on the side of really objecting to the electors, and you had 126 people sign on to the Texas A.G. lawsuit. You only had 10 people vote for impeachment. Again, they're trying to take political considerations into account.

And Marjorie Taylor Greene doing this is just trying to burnish, polish her brass right now in that she's the one out there who is talking for Trump. She's the one who is tweeting for him. She's using the exact same kind of language. That's why they are having this negotiation, and this is very sad, because I want to tell you guys right now, and Scott is right, this should have happened weeks ago. I don't know why they're having this discussion right now. I just don't get it. And I think that's the issue we have is it's nutty. And we don't want to pull in everybody from the carnival tent to vote here. We have got to reject that, and I hope the right decision is made.

[08:10:9]

CAMEROTA: By the way, gentlemen, less than 12 hours ago -- well, I guess a little bit more than 12 hours ago, she refused to apologize. She was on a radio show, Scott, and she was asked, would you like to clarify anything you've said in the past or maybe rethink it. And she said, no. She doesn't think she has anything to apologize. She basically said what's the big deal.

JENNINGS: Alisyn, this is the main tenet of their ideology. I was going to say conservatism as they see it, but it's not conservative. This is the main tenet of their ideology, unrepentant stupidity, unrepentant ignorance. Double down on every wrong thing because they are trying to triangulate people. Somewhere deep down she must know that she's wrong, but she sees there are people out there who say, well, there's media hating on her and there's Democrats hating on her, so I'm going to like her.

They are trying to build a coalition based on unrepentant stupidity and ignorance. This is not conservative. It's not Republican. It's not in the spirit of American democracy. It's not the spirit of our Constitution. It's totally broken. And if you are a conservative out there, and I know, you don't like the media. I get it. But this is not the hill you want to die on. Find another hill. This is not the one to die on. You'll regret it. This is limiting and it will relegate the Republican Party to national minority status for a very long time.

CAMEROTA: Scott Jennings, Denver Riggleman, we really appreciate your perspective. Thank you both.

RIGGLEMAN: Thank you.

JENNINGS: They you.

CAMEROTA: President Biden speaking out on President Trump's impeachment trial and what he says his family will not be doing in this administration. We have details in this brand-new interview to share with you, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:15:25]

BERMAN: We're getting our first sense of the cases that will be made in the Senate impeachment trial of the former president.

Joining us now, CNN White House correspondent John Harwood, and Norm Eisen. He served as counsel for the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment of the former president.

Ambassador Eisen, I want to start with you. The brief filed by the former president's new lawyers is really interesting in the arguments they make. I put interesting in quotation marks. Special quotation marks.

Let me read you quotes about how they're going to defend the former president.

The 45th president exercised his First Amendment right under the Constitution to express his belief the election results were suspect. Insufficient evidence exists upon which a reasonable jurist can conclude that the 45th president's statements were accurate or not and he, therefore, denies they were false.

Your take, Counselor?

NORM EISEN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: John, thanks for having me back on the program.

He's doubling down on the big lie that he stoked for so many months, repeated on January 6th and caused the insurrection. What an insult to those members of the Senate who will sit in judgment as the jury. They were held hostage by the rioters driven by these supposedly suspect claims. And when he says no reasonable jurist can make a finding, 60 reasonable jurists, many of them appointed by Donald Trump did make findings and in more than 60 cases, those suspicions were thrown out.

So this is really the same ugliness, slightly more polite words but it's the same big lie that caused so much devastation, violence and death.

CAMEROTA: But, Norm, one more point on this. This would never fly in a court of law. So that reasoning that they are using, insufficient evidence. You can't prove if it's right or wrong what he says.

That isn't how courts of law work as far as I know. And so, this is purely their, they know they can make this because they're in a political arena.

EISEN: Well, I think, of course, you're right, Alisyn. I would be sanctioned after 60 cases if I went in and said it's suspect because nobody can disprove the negative. It has been disproven. Even in a political court like the impeachment trial, there are limits.

And although they buried it inside the brief and the lawyers claim they're not going to rely upon it, these are fighting words. This is the same lie, and I think there will be consequences even in the Senate if they press this point.

And let's not forget that this week, disbarment proceedings were called for by the Michigan attorney general, governor and secretary of state against Sidney Powell and some of the lawyers who raised these same, quote, suspect issues. So, there may be other consequences for these lawyers as well. They are subject to discipline by the state bars of which they are members if they press this argument.

BERMAN: You know, John Harwood, this is interesting, because this is very same argument that John Cornyn, the senator from Texas, said that the former president should make. I mean, the former president has been warned -- don't do this. Republican senators don't want this.

On another front, the House impeachment managers made a prophylactic argument against what the former president will say, which is that, you can't constitutionally hold a trial for a president who was no longer in office. And their case, John, is, there's no January exception to impeachment or an impeachment trial. You can't say that with a month or two months left in an administration, you can do whatever you want because we can't complete the process.

Your take?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, of course not. And the argument that you can't constitutionally do this is weak as Mitt Romney has said. The consensus of legal experts is that you can. And the evidence for that is that it has been done with executive branch officials. It was done in the 19th century shortly after the civil war.

So that is a safe harbor for President Trump and his lawyers will take it, 45 Republican senators have sought shelter in that argument. But I really think the point you were just discussing with Norm amounts to a test, a trial in a sense for Republican senators themselves. To what degree do they stand up and reject that assertion by the president's lawyers and say, no, a reasonable person could not have doubt about the outcome of the election.

[08:20:00]

Mitch McConnell has said it, that Donald Trump lost the election. Everyone knows that he lost the election. But Republican senators are scared of their base.

It is a higher tone version of what Kevin McCarthy is going through with Marjorie Taylor Greene. She's a kook. The Republican caucus in the House depends on a lot of kooks and the energy they inspire for their election victories.

Are they willing? Do they have the inner strength to stand up and say, no, we reject that for the long-term good of the party?

In the same way, the Republican senators are going to go a good bit of the way toward defining whether or not they are, in fact, a legitimate, reasonable political opposition to Joe Biden by their willingness to either reject that assertion by the president or remain silent about it.

CAMEROTA: Norm, because you were the former White House ethics czar, I want to play for you, so this new bit of interview with President Joe Biden and the first lady where he talks about what his family's role will be in the White House. This was for "People" magazine. So watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No one in our family -- extended family is going to be involved in any government undertaking, foreign policy, and nobody has an office in this place.

Here's how I look at it. I said, the foul line is 15 feet away from the basket. Never get me closer than 17 feet because it really is a matter of public trust.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Sports metaphor, but even I understood it. I understood what he was trying to say. He's going to conduct business very differently than Donald Trump did.

EISEN: Well, it's the right approach. He's off to a great start on ethics, Alisyn. As you know, I wrote President Obama's ethics plan with the president.

Biden built on ours. It's actually better than the Obama plan that delivered a scandal-free presidency. Now he's got to deal with the family issues.

I like hearing that he wants to stay well back of the line. He said he's going to announce tough rules. We'll look forward to seeing those.

And, Alisyn, just in going on the air and saying over and over again, family will have no place here, he is setting what we call in the ethics profession tone at the top. That is the proper tone.

It sends a message to the clients of his brother, for example, hey, you're not going to get any special treatment in the White House or in the administration. And now we'll wait for the rules and let's hope they live up to that tough standard.

CAMEROTA: Norm Eisen, John Harwood, thank you very much. Great to talk to both of you.

A new study may help answer this question -- do any of the vaccines slow the spread or stop the spread of coronavirus? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:26:54]

CAMEROTA: Breaking news: a new study in the U.K. finds that the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine not only protects people from serious illness but also substantially slows transmission of the virus. This Oxford study has not yet been peer-reviewed but it finds the vaccine could cut transmission by nearly two-thirds.

Joining us to talk about this and all of the coronavirus news is Rick Bright. He's a former member of the Biden transition coronavirus advisory board.

Rick, great to have you here.

So that's good news because we've been waiting to see if the worry was that you could get vaccinated. It would protect you from severe illness and death but you could still be walking around as a carrier and, still, you know, infecting your grandparents or grandkids or whoever. So, the AstraZeneca thing is, huh, I mean, obviously, hopeful.

RICK BRIGHT, FORMER MEMBER, PRESIDENT-ELECT BIDEN'S CORONAVIRUS ADVISORY BOARD: It is good news, Alisyn. Thanks for having me back on.

This is encouraging, and it's not actually totally surprising. It is what we'd expect from most of our vaccines. I wouldn't be surprised to learn the other vaccines, the mRNA-based vaccines, Johnson & Johnson, didn't have similar results. AstraZeneca has gone the other mile to take additional swabs or nose samples from people after they've been vaccinated to see if they get infected. And if they have enough viral load on those swabs that they think would translate into passing that virus on to other people.

It's indirect lab-based test. It needs to be vetted out in the clinical setting, but it's really encouraging. Not surprising. It's what we see with other vaccines such as influenza, but it's good to start having that data coming in.

BERMAN: It's one of the unanswered questions in terms of coronavirus and the vaccines. Yes, it keeps you from getting sick but does it reduce or stop the spread? What are the ramifications here in terms of getting more people vaccinated in the meaning and importance of getting more people vaccinated as everyone engages in this new race against the variants?

BRIGHT: John, you hit the nail on the head. These variants are extremely concerning. What concerns me most about these variants is we do not have a national system in place as robust to be able to track these variants as they spread across the United States. Unlike the hurricane mapping that we see when we know a hurricane is coming into the United States days or weeks out in advance, we don't find out about these variants until they're on our shore and spreading among our population and then one happens to pop up.

Then we start looking for that particular mutation or variant. The viruses are continuing to mutate. And the variant that we know today is not going to be the variant that we have to deal with tomorrow. So we need to do a lot in our country and around the world actually to bolster our ability to track these viruses, do more genomic surveillance so we know how the viruses are mutating and the impact of these mutations.

We're already concerned these viruses can spread more quickly, more easily. That will translate into more deaths. We don't have quality data just yet to know how effective the vaccines or drugs will be as these viruses continue to change. We need to scale up our efforts quickly.

CAMEROTA: But, I mean, Rick, I hear your concern.

[08:30:00]